The Crossing Choir: World Premiere of Nina Shekhar's Tic-Talk in Germantown

Join us for our first collaboration with The Crossing, a four-time Grammy-winning choir conducted by Donald Nally.

The anchor of the concert is a world premiere from The Crossing’s 2023–2024 Resident Composer, Nina Shekhar. Nina’s Tic-Talk evolves from her experience as a child with vocal tics to an examination of language—specifically, its policing. Philadelphia pianist Dynasty Battles will join them on MIDI keyboard, contributing to the extraordinary sound world created by this uniquely imaginative composer.

The Crossing will give the first live performance of their 2024 pre-election video project, Cloud Anthem, set to Richard Blanco’s poem that insists there is a way to come together, to measure the time “until we….” The world premiere of Kile Smith’s Let all the Strains of Joy (mingle in my last song), a gift to The Crossing, will be heard alongside his earlier Rabindranath Tagore motet.

Nina Shekhar’s Tic-Talk is commissioned for The Crossing and Donald Nally by Elizabeth and Justus Schlichting; Nina was their 2023–2024 Resident Composer, made possible by a gift from Peter and Judy Leone.

About The Crossing:

The Crossing is a professional chamber choir, conducted by Donald Nally, that sings only new music, bringing together creative teams to imagine, present, and record new, substantial works for choir that look at the world and our place in it. Often using a journalistic approach to text curation, The Crossing commissions music that explores and expands ways of writing for choir, singing in choir, and listening to music for choir; many of its nearly 200 commissioned premieres address social, environmental, and political issues. With a commitment to recording, The Crossing has issued 36 albums, receiving four Grammy Awards for Best Choral Performance (2018, 2019, 2023, 2025), and ten Grammy nominations in nine consecutive years. The Crossing, with Donald Nally, was Musical America’s 2024 Ensemble of the Year, the American Composers Forum’s 2017 Champion of New Music, and received the 2015 Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence from Chorus America. Learn More

Host or Publisher Artcinia